Obviously had you honestly intended anything from the principles above you could not have claimed the Yugoslavs had put liices at risk. The moreso because you claim, ignorance of the allegations you are making.

I guess we should just accept that every single Labour party member is equally a fascist deliberatley involved in genocide on the basis that not one of them, Alice Mahon having quit, has acted otherwise. Drankly I don’t have the time to do the research on the whole racistm organlegging pro-nazi party but obviously there is no requirement that one do so.

I will also say that if you think that coming onto a comment forum and making use of a quite specific event that most commenters are unlikely to be aware of makes you big, clever or right then you are quite seriously mistaken.

@Roger – I feel a response warrants a larger blog post, will put one together but please be aware that you are in a queue.

Point made.

You selfish bastard

Are you trying to live the one life you get by your own standards and not someone elses?

You are an enemy of the State.

Bleep

So wrapped up in the minutae of erm…er….what exactly….???

And this is a claim to be progressive?????

Social justice.

You want it. Post up your defence of the thing that you believe has the right to invade my life.

Not my fault if the MSM censor reporting atrocities. You cannot honestly deny that the Labour party, as such, supported illegal war resulting in our police engaging in masacres such as Dragodan, genocide, the sexual enslavement of children & dissiecting living people to steal their body organs.

I think those are bad things.

[145][146] Well, if you can keep the 22% you have in the latest poll you may well increase your seats. But even the most diehard LibDem must privately think that Clegg isn’t in the Ashdown or Kennedy class as a vote-winner. FWIW Wells gives you 54 seats on these numbers, Baxter 60 – but I expect the polls to move much to the Tories during the next year.

Thats nice. Well lets address the fact that the Labour party practices war crimes, massacres, the sexual enslavement of children & dissecting thousands of innocent & living people to steal their body organs then.

Lets see if any of the “ambassadors” for their party’s values explain why that is among them.

Specifically, such a loss would require both Chris Huhne (most marginal) and Adrian Sanders (fairly marginal) being removed from office completely. I’m reasonably certain that’s not going to happen for either of them.

If you have actual evidence to the contrary, based on experience on the ground or psephological research, feel free to post it.

Otherwise, you’re blowing smoke.

The likely outcome, so far as one can tell this far out, is a Parliamentary Party of about forty, or a quarter of the size of the Labour “rump”.

I recommend reading Sunder’s comment @120. Many of the comments here have missed the sub-text to this. When I received this statement a few days ago I hesitated. I know that these things can seem self-regarding and, may I even say pompous. The reason I signed it was because: (i) It did actually articulate the ethos behind my blog and more importantly (ii) it articulated an approach to politics that goes beyond blogging- I explained this on http://www.anthonypainter.co.uk yesterday.

It is fine to say the Labour party’s bad in this or that way but there is an under-current to this that shouldn’t be ignored: an argument for a different type of Labour party. By piling into the sentiment behind this statement you are hurling rocks at the people who want the Labour party to change. There is no centre or centre-left future that does not involve the Labour party absent of seismic changes politics the like of which we cannot forsee nor should we vainly plan for. To disregard or dismiss the Labour party is to cripple non-conservative politics realistically.

So the statement doesn’t say ‘we love the Labour party and aren’t we all very virtuous.’ It says ‘the Labour party has to change and these are the principles we believe should be behind that change and, in the conduct of blogging, we will attempt to adhere to those principles.’

I’ve been trying to work out how that sentiment is at all dismissive of those of the non-Labour left either in the Liberal Democrats or non-aligned. I just can’t I’m afraid. A renewed Labour party is critical to the social liberal politics that I believe most people on this site sympathise with to a greater or lesser degree. Nobody is suggesting that is an exclusively Labour exercise. Quite the opposite in fact:

We believe we must change the culture of Labour’s engagement with those outside the party too, including those who were once our supporters but who are disillusioned, and new generations forming their political opinions.

Can I get back to writing now please?

2. you talk of being ‘inclusive’ yet are immediately the opposite – how does that work?

I’ve read this article and the comments and feel that it generally reminds me of the 17 year old boy, not engaging with many peers, sitting in his bedroom thinking and worrying about the meaning of life. He is a very intense individual, uptight, slow to reply, uncertain, unconfident. He lives off his imagination. He is continually in a debate with himself, trying to square circles and make everything tidy. He hopes for world peace but can’t find it in his bedroom. So he invites others to his bedroom to converse about whether they see things the same. They never actually do anything but they have interesting if stilted conversation. No one ever gets to know anyone else, no one becomes friends, they just meet and talk ad infinitum.

As a former Labour Party ( NOT NEW LABOUR) person of 40 years, growing up in a declining northern city and arriving at the 1997 election with a little hpoe, it didn’t take long to see that there was no hope. New Labour in all its glory was bound up with the Bernie Eccleston affair. And so it continued up to today with the most arrogant, authoritarian, undemocratic, war mongering bunch of hoons I’ve come across. More interested in self aggrandisment and celebrity status, the evil they speak makes me hate them with a vengence. They have destroyed our economy, they have destroyed our country, they have removed and continue to remove our rights. They pay themselves and their friend ludicrous amounts of our money. The politicise the media. They politicise the police. Everything is a TARGET for them in their adventure with the British people. Funnily, none of them have ever worked outside the institutional systems of government or education or law. None of them have a clue about the world in which WE live.

I don’t see anything here that changes my mind.

Progressive Politics – RUBBISH GIBBERISH NONSENSE

I hear Gordon has said there’s loads of hospital cleaners jobs going, some here should go get one quick……

But your article suggests you love the adversarial banter?

Yup. Read the rest of the piece. US blogs, which are community moderated, and have moved on from GF like smear worship, are clearly streets ahead.

As for ‘liveliness’, I don’t know this blog well enough yet, but there are too many smart a**e contentless posts in most UK centre left blogs for my liking. They’re tiresome, and with a community moderated system would quickly be downrated or hidden. Instead they get equal weight to genuine argument, and so people get put off by the toxicity and adversarial banter. Just my humble opinion. And the lack of threading makes dialogue and debate very difficult.

And good luck with your Guido hero worship. Sorry to hear Fleet Street is poring through his rubbish. Poor dearie. But if you swim with sharks you’ll get nipped.

Given your level of engagement, I won’t even both to explain the bigger political issues at stake. But thanks for showing to all and sundry how bad things are at present in the UK

It’s time for someone else to have a chance at leading us – my personal choice would be the Liberal Democrats,

Mine too, they’re currently our best bet, which pretty much makes then our only bet

but – oddly – Labour completely FAILED at constitutional reform

Well, not completely—they did manage FOI and the HRA, but they failed at the most important bit, the one that would stop the perpetual infighting actually being damaging.

, meaning the Lib Dems will be on the sidelines for another generation.

Absolutely convinced that’s not true—they messed up the ‘05 election campaign (I wasn’t a member then), that was fairly obvious from the sidelines. But they’re definitely not going to this time.

They might lose a bit of ground in some seats to the Tories, but they’ll gain a lot of ground in others against Labour, and will likely take 2nd place in a lot—I think we’re looking at a likely Tory Govt after the next GE, and we need to reduce the impact of that as much as possible. But there’s a good chance the LDs will get over 100 seats, possibly more, and will be strongly chasing Labour if not beating them on vote share. The election after that (which might come fairly soon, I’m thinking a ‘74 scenario is possible)?

All to play for. Especially given that a period out of office, even a brief one, will give Labour time to ditch the leadership and retrench, so we could see a Lib Dem led coalition. Especially true if disaffected Labourite jump ship (hopefully bringing the co-op with them).

There is NOTHING this Labour government has done that is worthy of praise. And that’s a shame for all progressives.

Even I wouldn’t go that far though. They’ve done a lot of good. It’s just that the harm they’ve done outweights it.